Черная обшивка дома: выбор древесины, скрытые расходы и строгие правила пожарной безопасности

Cladding a house in black starts at £46 per square metre for the boards alone, and the timber you pick matters more than the colour. Species sets how long the wall lasts. The finish only decides how often you are back up a ladder. There is a second trap waiting. Cladding is usually permitted development in England, but that right vanishes on designated land, and Building Regulations apply whether or not you ever need a planning application. Which timber types work best for black cladding? Durability is graded under I.S. EN 350, which sorts heartwood into five classes from very durable at class 1 to not durable at class 5. Larch is class 3 to 4. Norway spruce is class 4. Douglas fir is class 3 from North America. Western red cedar is class 2 from North America but drops to class 3 when it is grown in the UK or Ireland. Two rules change how you read that table. Where a species is given a range, specify the lower class, so larch is a class 4 timber in practice. And the ratings cover heartwood only. Timber with sapwood present should be treated as not durable, effectively class 5, which is why a cheap board fails early whatever finish it is carrying. There are three routes to a black wall. Site-applied stain or paint goes onto standard boards after installation. Factory-coated boards arrive with the coating already applied under controlled conditions. Charred timber, the Japanese Yakisugi or Shou Sugi Ban technique, has its surface burned, brushed and oiled. Charring differs in kind from the other two. Burning consumes the sugars and starches that fungi feed on and leaves a carbon layer bonded into the board. Paint and stain sit on top as a sacrificial film that is always on its way out. Both look black on day one, but only one is a change to the wood, which is why charcoal cladding is priced as a material rather than as a finish. How much does it cost to clad a house in black? Board prices track the species almost exactly. TimberSol lists charred spruce at £46.00 per square metre excluding VAT, charred thermowood at £59.00, charred Douglas fir at £61.00, charred larch at £63.00 and charred Accoya at £147.00. Its black larch cladding sits in the middle of that spread, and larch is the species most UK projects settle on: durable enough once sapwood is excluded, and dark enough once charred to read as genuinely black rather than very dark brown. Board price is only part of the budget. Also allow for treated battens and a breather membrane, austenitic stainless steel fixings as COFORD guidance recommends, installation labour, scaffolding on two-storey elevations, and stripping whatever is on the wall now. A typical semi carries roughly 80 to 120 square metres of wall area, though openings and profile waste move that figure in both directions. Do you need planning permission? For most houses in England, no. Cladding falls under permitted development and no application is needed. Bear in mind that planning permission and Building Regulations are separate approvals, and cladding routinely needs the second without ever touching the first. On designated land the exemption disappears completely. Paragraph A.2(a) of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 states that on article 2(3) land, development is not permitted if it would consist of or include the cladding of any part of the exterior with stone, artificial stone, pebble dash, render, timber, plastic or tiles. Confirm what article 2(3) covers at your address before assuming anything. Listed buildings sit under a stricter regime again, needing listed building consent for work affecting character. Councils can also issue Article 4 Directions that strip permitted development rights street by street, so a call to the planning department costs nothing and settles it. New-build estates add design codes and restrictive covenants, which are contractual rather than planning matters but bind you just the same. Building Regulations apply either way The fire rule is precise, and narrower than most homeowners assume. Regulation 7(2) of the Building Regulations 2010 requires materials in the external wall of a relevant building to be European class A2-s1,d0 or A1. Regulation 7(4)(a) defines a relevant building as one with a storey at least 18 metres above ground level containing dwellings, an institution or a room for residential purposes. An ordinary house is nowhere near that threshold. Detailing is what actually matters on a house. COFORD and TRADA guidance calls for a ventilated cavity of at least 25 mm, support battens at no more than 600 mm centres, boards stopped 150 to 200 mm clear of the ground, and installation at a moisture content of 16% plus or minus 3%. Living with a black wall Maintenance depends entirely on how the black was achieved. Site-applied paints and stains fade and need renewing on a cycle. Charred boards ask for occasional re-oiling instead, because the protection is in the board rather than on it. Dark surfaces also absorb more solar energy, which raises thermal and moisture movement in the timber, so the ventilated cavity behind the boards earns its keep on a black wall far more than on a pale one.